Senga Nengudi

Warp Trance, 2007. In collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia
Multi-channel audio/video installation, sound composition by Butch Morris.

Warp Trance is Nengudi’s first work involving video. Her primary focus to date has been discarded, everyday materials with farther reaching associations than the viewer might initially assume. The jacquard punch card panels onto which the video footage is projected in Warp Trance fit into this category. As well as being a revolutionary step in textile production, the jacquard loom was also the first machine that used punch cards to control a sequence of operations. Consequently, the cards are considered the initial step in the history of computing hardware as well as a key conceptual precursor to the development of computer programming.